There’s the trend of companies like ESPN bleeding subscribers, and thus facing a strong reason to be a bit more frugal. Per Minium, TV revenue from Conference USA plummeted from “$1.1 million per school in 2015-16 to $200,000 this year.” But the crunch may be coming for smaller leagues, and nobody has faced that more than Conference USA. The last Big Ten TV deal showed that - despite concerns about cord cutting from traditional cable companies - elite programs can still command major rights fees. One way or another, changes are coming, due to TV. Would you watch a four-team playoff with Western Kentucky, Georgia Southern, UTSA, and Southern Miss? I bet you would. With four divisions, the conference could even set up a four-team playoff to determine a league champion, interesting inventory for a television package. Plus, we even found conference homes for New Mexico State and Liberty! UMass? Well, uh, you guys are on your own. We are pro-G5 football blood-feuds, basically. Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe can continue their blood-feud over who gets to use “Louisiana” the most. Georgia State and Georgia Southern can continue their fans’ hated blood-feud over who gets to go by GSU. It lets UAB build one with South Alabama. This also brings all of the non-P5/AAC Texas schools into one league, helping grow rivalries. That’s OK league membership has changed quite a bit! But by hewing more to pure geography, you know what division everybody is in. If you aren’t a graduate of a Conference USA school, you probably can’t name every program in the league right now. And who could forget the SUNBEAST? This setup would make it way easier to remember who is where. Fans of schools in other G5 conferences have floated various other merger proposals, like this AAC/C-USA one. We mapped out the once-proposed Big 12/Big East merger. We poked around at what MOUNT USA might have looked like when the Mountain West and Conference USA talked about joining forces back in 2012. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about consolidating conferences recently. So here’s a fun idea for what a Conference USA/Sun belt hybrid might look like: The WAC might have taught us that it can be logistically difficult to run a 16-team-plus conference, but erring on the side of practicality isn’t fun, and if non-power football should be anything, it should be fun. McGhee proposed a sprawling, 28-team megaconference, bringing in C-USA, Sun Belt, and a few FCS programs, like James Madison and Sam Houston State. A consolidation of two Group of 5 conferences could address two major problems. The idea? It’s time for Conference USA and the Sun Belt to think about some sort of merger. The most interesting conference realignment suggestion for now comes from Harry Minium of The Virginian-Pilot, echoing an earlier suggestion from Patrick McGhee of the Sun Herald.
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